


First We Take Manhattan

by havisham



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, Fix-It, M/M, Partnership, Post-Canon, Secrets, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9052960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: A familiar figure comes to Nick's door with an irresistible proposition.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



First of all: Gatsby was very much alive and had slipped into Nick’s apartment like a thief in the night. Exclamations of surprise, grief or even anger were useless -- besides, Nick was still reeling from the kiss Gatsby planted on him as soon as he came in. 

“It was a bad situation I was in; had to get out as quickly as possible. Sorry to confuse you, old sport,” Gatsby said, eyes twinkling. He looked much the same, though he now had a dashing mustache and a wicked scar on his temple. His hair was different too, and Nick wasn’t sure he actually liked it. (Gatsby would always be blond, for Nick.) 

Nick knew he ought to be more angry -- he’d thought he’d buried Gatsby, quite literally, in the past. Instead he asked Gatsby, a little breathlessly, what he was going to do now. 

“Settle a few things here in Manhattan, and then go to Berlin. Will you join me, Nick?” 

Nick thought of his day job, which was just endlessly sitting at his desk, gathering fat around his waist and dust on his soul. “I will. What do you need me to do?” 

Gatsby smiled broadly. “I knew you were the right person to ask.” 

*

Bank-robbery. That’s what Gatsby wanted him to help with. 

They were _astonishingly_ good at it. 

*

Nick wondered if he should send word to Daisy -- surely she ought to know? If not that Gatsby was alive, then at least some hint of the same? Daisy had loved them both, in her way, limited though it was. Nick broached the subject with Gatsby, as they were getting ready for another heist.

“No,” was Gatsby’s curt answer, as he adjusted his mask. He said something frankly chilling about leaving no witnesses. 

“What about me?” Nick asked him, feeling a little apprehensive. 

“You’re not a witness, my dear. You’re an accomplice.” 

*

Nick’s father, Mr. Carraway, sent him an alarmed telegraph from Saint Paul, about the crime-wave that was sweeping New York City. Shouldn’t Nick really give up his Manhattan experiment and come home? 

(If he didn’t want to live in Saint Paul anymore, Mr. Carraway wrote, there was always Minneapolis, though _that_ city was almost certainly overrun by socialists and other agitators.) 

Nick wrote back to tell his parents that he was very happy, but also very busy. They oughtn’t mind if he didn’t write back to them for a while. 

*

They were chased out of the city by a hail of bullets and Wolfsheim’s vendetta against Gatsby (and by extension, against Nick), but they made it onto the ocean liner, the SS _Île de France_ , which just happened to be making its maiden journey from New York that very same week.

So they waved goodbye to New York, and set their sights toward Le Havre. 

Nick hadn’t been to Europe since the war and he assumed Gatsby hadn’t either -- but with Gatsby, it was always hard to tell. Whenever Nick would inquire about Gatsby’s past -- or even what he had done after his supposed death in that swimming pool in West Egg -- Gatsby would look grave and seemed at the verge of telling him. 

But then Gatsby would run his finger down the back of Nick’s neck or make a startlingly funny observation that Nick had to laugh at -- and then they were back to where they started from. 

It was frustrating, of course, and said something about Gatsby that he’d trust Nick with a gun to hold up a bank while Gatsby emptied their vaults, but not an honest line of biographical information, but Nick was nothing if not dogged when it came to Jay Gatsby. He would find it out, eventually.

“This won’t end well for us, Nick. You understand that, don’t you?” Gatsby told him, one night after dinner. They were lingering on the deck, despite the chilly evening air. The end of Gatsby’s cigarette flared brightly in the dark. Nick leaned in and pressed the end of his cigarette against Gatsby’s, lighting it. 

Nick breathed in and then blew out the smoke, which hung in the air for a moment, before the ship left it behind. “I know. But there’ll be no more lies this time, Jay.” 

“Good man,” Gatsby said, clapping him in the back. Nick inhaled some of the smoke and coughed and Gatsby laughed, and that sound, too, was left behind as the ship sailed away from the green breast of the New World, towards something both old and new. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Elf. 
> 
> The title from the late, great Leonard Cohen. 
> 
> Now, I grew up in St. Paul (and went to school near Summit Avenue, where Fitzgeralds did and the Carraways would have lived), and so naturally couldn't resist that dig at Minneapolis. (Which is a heckva town both then and now.) 
> 
> How did Gatsby afford to throw those amazing parties? [I think we all know the answer to that.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/13/how-the-great-gatsby-could-afford-those-great-parties/?utm_term=.1db17ddd6b57) (Crime.) 
> 
> And finally have a peek at the the gorgeous, Art-Deco furnished SS [_Île de France_](http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2009/the-ss-ile-de-france). Honestly, get me a ticket.


End file.
